


Dog Days

by Elliott_Fletcher



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, It's weed and it's mentioned once, M/M, Menstruation, Penis Measuring, Shoplifting, TW suicide ideation as part of a joke, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:28:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26585881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elliott_Fletcher/pseuds/Elliott_Fletcher
Summary: "Blood, your blood? Whose blood? Its blood?” She’s hyperventilating into the receiver, and he finds his own breath quickening in response. “I, uh, I always knew you’d kill a man someday, Bev, but I thought it’d be with your looks!” His words sputter, gaining speed like an old car, slow to start.She chuckles but its hollow.You see, that’s the reason people come to Richie. For a laugh, for a distraction. And he hands them out wholeheartedly, like a comedic Jehovah’s Witness. You can count on him, for this at least.Bev gets her first period after It.
Relationships: Beverly Marsh & Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 4
Kudos: 38





	Dog Days

Richie is home alone, mid-marathon of the new releases from that Rent-A-Vid on Main street when the phone rings. He checks his watch – nearly two in the morning. He stands from the couch and wraps the afghan around him like a toga before trudging towards the landline. A kernel of forlorn popcorn crunches under his heel.

“Tozier residence--what's your damage?”

He recognizes those sobs immediately – too high to be any of the boys (except for Eddie  whose body wouldn’t touch puberty with a ten-foot-pole).

“Bev?”

He hears a shuffling noise and a whimper that sounds vaguely affirmative. There’s a tightness in his throat, like a boa constrictor digesting an egg, only the egg is the lump in his throat, and the lump in his throat is everything he doesn’t know how to say. 

“Blood--” Bev chokes out, and Richie’s mind scrambles to catch up.

“Blood, your blood? Whose blood? Its blood?” She’s hyperventilating into the receiver, and he finds his own breath quickening in response. “I, uh, I always knew you’d kill a man someday, Bev, but I thought it’d be with your looks!” His words sputter, gaining speed like an old car, slow to start.

She chuckles but its hollow.

You see, that’s the reason people come to Richie. For a laugh, for a distraction. And he hands them out wholeheartedly, like a comedic Jehovah’s Witness. You can count on him, for this at least.

“It’s mine,” She whispers, and Richie clucks his tongue. 

“Are you hurting?”

“No,” she inhales sharp enough to be audible. “No,” She says it again, and Richie’s not sure who she’s trying to convince.

“ So then where's it coming from? You sure it’s yours?”

“It’s mine, okay, it’s from my . . . vagina.” She finishes quietly.

Richie splutters, “Why?! God, are you sure you’re not in pain?”

She chuckles, and there’s a little more heart in it. “It’s just my period, Rich, I’m fine, I just – it’s the first one since . . .”

“Since It.” He finishes for her.

“Yeah.”

“But wait, hold the phone, you’re telling me blood is coming out of your lady-dick.”

“Yeah.”

“. . . And you’re fine?”

“Yeah.

“What the fuck?” He huffs and holds his blanket-toga tighter around himself. “I’ll never understand women.”

He gets Bev laughing, keeps her laughing until she’s tired. She leaves him on the line while she takes care of the blood, and it’s in this silence that he feels heavy. The dark itches at his feet, so he rocks back-and-forth, an unsteady ball-heel-ball of his foot, but that only makes him antsy. He thinks about Bev, bleeding in her bed, that smell pervading her sheets. It leaves a bad taste in his mouth.

“Goodnight,”  She says, “Thank you,”  She says, but Richie feels helpless and awfully fake. For someone who just cheered someone out of a panic attack, he sure feels terribly afraid.

* * *

“You’re  gonna get us in trouble, and guess what? I’m not taking the blame this time,” Eddie crosses his arms tightly, but he follows Richie behind the curtain of glass beads anyway. 

“It’ll be worth it, trust me,” Richie grins. He gestures onward dramatically. Eddie smacks his hands away. “See?” Richie has grabby hands like Toddlers have sticky hands. It’s an indisputable constant, so Eddie isn’t surprised when he grabs a magazine from nearby. Or when he grabs Eddie’s wrist (the newly healed one – and yes, his fingers wrap all the way around it).

“My mother says Playboy is perverted. And unethical. And highly un-feminist.” Eddie spits out, “And who knows who whacked off to that, and now you’re touching it. They probably got their penis juices all over, and \--”

“Never call it that again,” Richie warns. 

“ Don't lick your fingers! That’s disgusting.”

“I have to turn the page!” Richie says in  defense . “God, you make this no fun.”

“You know what’s not fun? Sex work.  I n this economy. Do you know how those girls are treated?”

Richie shoves the magazine into Eddie’s chest and walks out. “No fun. At all.”

Eddie  cringes and  pulls a disinfectant wipe from his fanny pack . He  cleans his hands thoroughly, scrubbing the front of his shirt  and the front and back cover of the magazine. Glancing over both shoulders, he rolls it up like a newspaper and shoves it down the leg of his jeans.

“Hey! You’re not supposed to be back there!” The elderly  store-owner barks. He has too little hair and too many teeth.

“Oh! Sorry, sir, I’m a bit lost!” The man blocks his exit, peeling the beads from the archway with a wrinkled hand on the door-frame. Eddie ducks under his arm, his heart beating so fast. His chest aches and itches. He shoves his hands in his pockets, half to adjust the magazine and half to keep them off the zipper of his fanny pack. He  _ doesn’t _ have asthma.

Eddie juts his thumb towards the store front. “Door’s that way, right? I’ll be off, sir, have a good one!” There’s only a slight tremor in his voice.

“Now wait just a minute,” The man swallows, his Adam’s apple leaping grotesquely up to his chin. A piece of crust falls from his face when he squints. He takes a step towards Eddie, who falters back three more.

A bright  _ chime _ resounds from the door.  “Eds, what’s taking so long ,” Richie chews a fat piece of gum. His eyes cross,  affixed on the growing bubble at his lips.  _ Pop _ . He looks up at the situation, eyes three sizes too big behind his glasses. “Oh.”

“Eds?” The gross man echoes. He clicks his tongue and Eddie gets too clear a view of his rotting teeth. “Edward Kaspbrak, if that’s you, I have half a mind to ring your mother.”

Richie wipes the gum off his chin. He rubs his middle finger and thumb together in a silent snap, and Eddie recognizes the gesture. It means Richie’s  _ thinking _ _ \-- _ means he’s about to run his mouth. “You wouldn’t want to do that, Mr.” He smiles, and it’s toothy but not in that creepy way the old guy has mastered. “She’s dead.”

“Richie!” Eddie yelps, and his feet unglue themselves from the stained linoleum. He grabs Richie by the elbow and runs them out of the store. The door chimes dejectedly, but they leave it far behind them. They run and run and run, past the sandy baseball diamond, the corner store, the Aladdin . . . they fall to the ground panting on Richie’s front lawn.

“You have,” Eddie wheezes, “to stop telling people my Mom’s,” _wheeze_ , “dead!”

“Why not, Spaghetti?” He rolls to Eddie’s side, steamroller-style, and they lay head to toe in the grass. He pulls his glasses off and cleans them with his overshirt. “She acts like it.”

Eddie looks over to Richie’s beat-up sneaker, the bright red shoelaces. Richie pulls his socks down over the tongue of them . . . He narrows his eyes at the hairs at his ankle. He waits too long to speak. “Doesn’t make her dead.”

Richie sits up, fistful in the blades, and Eddie follows because something about this moment feels like a mirror, and he doesn’t want to break it. He looks at the blackheads on Richie’s nose, whose lips move silently around the words. “You have to wish it, sometimes, though . . . Don’t’cha?

Eddie inhales, exhales, watches Richie’s chest rise and fall in time. 

He breaks the mirror. “She’s my Mom.” He stands, wiping the grass-stains from his knees, frowning when they remain. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Richie.”

He’s  doesn’t want to keep having this fight. He picks up his bike from the open garage and rides to the next subdivision. The magazine hits his thigh with each pedal, chaffing. It leaves his skin sore by the time he reaches the house. 

“Mom, I’m home!” He calls, loud enough so she could hear it from anywhere in the house, knowing full well she’s sat right where he left her. He pads into the kitchen and scrubs at his knees until green becomes something akin to aquamarine. Once satisfied, he follows the sound of a staticky game show.

He hears a snort, and quickly after she greets him. “Eddie-bear?” She points to her cheek. Eddie toes his runners off and walks over to her, kisses her cheek. “I made dinner. Come sit with me.” She says it like it’s an offer, though he knows if he  refuses, she won’t drop it.

It’s hamburger-helper in overcooked pasta, and his stomach turns over at the smell. “Looks wonderful, Mama,” he shovels noodles onto his fork, and the beef slides off with a  _ plonk _ . “Completely unrelated, but I’ve decided to be vegetarian.”

“Vege--Eddie, why would you say such a thing.” Her frown is as deep as her withering stare. Her eyes are yellowed in the corners.

He places his fork carefully on his plate but it still  _ clangs _ . “It has many health benefits, Mama.”

“But--that will be so expensive!”

“Actually, meat is more expensive than vegetables--”

“Don’t talk back to me.” She slams her fork down.

Eddie swallows, swallows thick and hard. He presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth, presses his hands into the sanitized table, and stands to leave. She grabs his wrist. Her fingers don’t make it around. 

“You will sit and finish your dinner, Eddie-bear.”

* * *

Richie throws the cassette in. 

“Eddie, baby, this might just be God’s masterpiece,” he turns around his room like he’s dizzy, somehow not tripping over the stacks of garbage. His mags and books are strewn haphazardly, his clothes  _ mostly _ in the bin. “I  wanna ravage someone to this song, you know? Leave them breathless.”

Eddie giggles, but he doesn’t know why. Richie’s room always smells like teenage boy, like that musk on his clothes after gym, and faintly of old soap in a wet towel. He bounces on the bed to the music, each spring creaking desperately beneath his knees. 

“What, you think that’s funny?” Richie guffaws, his feet moving twice as fast on the hardwood. He air-guitars and his lips move out of sync with the words. He spills them faster than Bowie, spitting them out as if for Eddie’s benefit, as if to prove to him that he’s listened to the song enough to know the words by heart.

“By the time you actually have sex with a girl this song’ll be history.”

“How dare you,” his hands scoop under his own shirt, petting himself like a cat in exaggerated sexuality. “The ladies love me, just ask -”

“My mom, yeah, yeah, Richie, sure.” Eddie rolls his eyes and lies down on the bed. It’s uncomfortable, Richie’s plaid comforter and awful-red afghan a lumpy mountain beneath his spine. He tugs his socks straight from where they’ve slipped down his calves.

“I’d start stripping _right_ ,” His finger dangles in the air, dancing with the electric guitar. The chorus comes in, “Now.” Richie unbuttons his shirt, wears it around his shoulders like a shall. “Get her real worked up.”

“She’ll be worked up, alright, you’re  gonna make her vomit before you even touch her, doofus.” 

“You’re just jealous .”

Eddie fake-gags, his finger half in his mouth to prove the point (but not  _ in-in _ his mouth because who knows the last time Richie washed his bedding). 

Richie  smirks,  smug, and  tosses his shirt to the wal l .  The shirt falls limply to join the pile beside the basket.  Richie’s chest looks like Eddie’s, though where Richie is smooth and  too- white, Eddie has soft, wiry hairs. His eyes fall down, searching for any sign of post-pubescence. He finds it in the boy’s hips, in dark patches, in the trail, in his joggers slung low.

It leaves a bad taste in his mouth to stare too long, though every inch of Richie begs to be stared at and researched. The cassette finishes with a click. Richie is underdressed and Eddie is underdeveloped. 

“Look what I stole,” Eddie says to break the silence. He opens his bag and pulls out the magazine. It smells like vinegar and disinfectant.

“Eddie, you hound!” Richie cries out. He bellows a howl of delight and starts flipping through the pages. Eddie’s already examined from cover-to-cover, so he doesn’t pay much attention. Richie jumps onto the bed, ass-first. The residual bounce knocks Eddie onto his side. He watches lazily as Richie thumbs each page. This time, when he licks his finger, it doesn’t make him want to gag. You could eat off that mag. Not that Eddie would, but you could! And that in itself was something to be proud of.

“I think you did the impossible,” Richie grins, and Eddie bristles with the statement. He loves doing the impossible. “You made a dirty mag  _ clean _ .”

“Just imagine what I could do with your room.”

“You wouldn’t,” Richie gasps. “I have spent years cultivating this level of décor.”

“Your bedroom alone brings down the property value of the whole street. What’s that smell anyways? Do sleep on a skunk?”

Richie pushes his glasses up the ridge of his nose. “Weed,” he says quietly, like it’s a secret. It’s not a secret that he smokes with Bev. 

“Have you never seen Reefer Madness?”

“Uh, duh,” Richie stops on a page. “Don’t you think I’m counting on that shortened life expectancy thing? No way am I living through a receding hairline.”

“So, what’s the plan then? Ibuprofen overdose? Tall building?”

“Come on, you know I’m a coward. I’d get some underground euthanasia or something, call it quits at 30.”

“I thought you said you wanted to have sex before you died.”

Richie shouts, “Rude!” He rolls the mag and bats him with it. Eddie cages his face with his arms, but that just opens up his armpits for attack. Richie digs in with his fingers.

“Ow!” Eddie kicks up at him, anything to keep him back. “What did you do, rip out my armpit hair?”

“Yep,” Richie grins, “Your last one.”

“Can we stop joking about how I haven’t hit puberty yet? When is it going to start being funny?” His head thuds against the wall. What  colour was the room supposed to be? 

“You can’t just limit my comedic material like that, Eds.”

“My body, my choice,” He echoes. His thoughts drift towards the ceiling fan. His focus leaves him entirely, spacing out and out and out.

“I’m sure you’re developed where it counts.” Richie says, and it comes from nowhere.

“Bigger than you,” Eddie says distantly, fairly certain that’s what Richie’s referring to.

Richie guffaws, “As of when? Third Grade?”

He can’t really say why he knows because that would admit that he looks in the locker room, which from his understanding is directly against Bro Code.

“Show me,” Richie says. 

“No,” his face flushes.

“Then you’re not bigger than me.”

“It doesn’t work like that--”

“ Micropenis until proven otherwise,” Richie says sagely. 

“Fine,” Eddie stands rigidly from the bed. His sock has slipped down to his ankle, and he tugs it back up. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to use your bathroom.”

Richie whistles, and thrusts the mag into the air as an offering. “It’s dangerous to go alone, take this.”

“Don’t need it.”

“What?”

“I don’t need it.”

“Uh, so you stole this and risked going to juvenile prison just to not,” Richie punctuates, “Need it.”

“It--” Eddie huffs. “It just, doesn’t do anything for me, okay?” He spits out with vitriol. “Can we drop it?”

Richie lets the mag fall to the ground. “Consider it dropped.”

“I hate you,” Eddie mutters, turning on his heel. He knows where the bathroom is. He usually takes his time to look at the hanging photographs, but today is not one of those days. He’s especially impatient today.

There’s no lock on the upstairs washroom, but it beats traversing the entire Tozier residence with a hard-on, so he leans against the door and calls it a day. He unzips his jeans and lets his mind drift. One day, he really is going to clean Richie’s room.  _ So _ _ disgusting _ , he thinks. Everything about him. His greasy half-curls, his smudged glasses. Dirty, crusty, raunchy,  _ Richie _ . . . 

He gets his hand on the underside of his dick, and he likes the warmth of it, but that’s about it. It feels like nothing, so far. He’s fairly numb to this kind of thing and doesn’t give it a second thought. Aside from showers, where he pumps routinely, this is undercovers-stuff. Not broad daylight, bathroom, show your best friends, stuff.

He lets himself get hard;  _ Lets _ because it feels like an admission of something. This part of him that he chokes off and keeps under control only rarely gets to rear its metaphorical head. When he’s thick in his palm, he gives a few lazy tugs and tries to think of something to keep it happy while he tucks it back into his pants.  _ Swimsuits? _ He supplies.  _ Nope _ . He has little imagination to spare, but the thought of showing Richie his dick seems to be enough. Probably because it’s a little wrong.

He does up the button and makes his way back to the bedroom. Richie lays on his back under comforter helpfully pitched up by his own erection. Eddie swallows.

“Drumroll please,” Eddie jokes, and Richie vibrates his lips for the bit. “Count of three?”

“One,” Richie twinkles his fingers in anticipation. He looks like a money-hungry thief about to grab a bag of goodies, but the ‘goodies’ is just his own cock. Or, the pride of being bigger.

“Two,” Inwardly he groans. If he’s wrong, he’ll never live it down.

“Three.”

Eddie shucks his pants to his knees. His white briefs catch on his thighs, but he is completely exposed nonetheless. Richie whips the blanket off like a cape.

“Holy shit, Kaspbrak,” Richie stands up, moving too quickly. Eddie doesn’t know whether to take a step back to compensate. Two penises out at one time isn’t a situation he knows how to calculate for. “It’s closer than I thought.”

“Do you have a ruler?” Eddie says, then chokes a bit on his saliva when Richie pumps lazily at his cock. It’s to keep it big, Eddie tells himself. His head feels cottony.

“Nope, let’s just line ‘ em up,” Richie steps close, so close. They line of base to tip side by side. If there’s a difference in size, it’s only in thickness. Eddie sighs out in relief. His tip brushes against Richie’s hipbone. His stomach flutters. “So, I think I win skinny penis prize,” Richie laughs at himself. If he notices the lick of precum at Eddie’s tip he doesn’t say anything. They don’t look each other in the eye.

“What do we do now, Lover boy,” Eddie mocks. 

“Uh,” Richie sputters, and his dick bobs with the movement. “I think it’s  ol ’ Rich’s private time.” Eddie bends down to hike his briefs back up, along with his pants. Richie’s aren’t anywhere to be seen, his legs barren and hairy and Eddie can’t peel his eyes away from them. Richie picks up the discarded mag, and Eddie’s eyes follow his flat ass. “Here,” he says. “Give it to Billy.”

“Don’t you want it?” It’s crinkled, and he takes it and flattens it out again.

Richie sits on the bed, and pushes his glasses up again. He looks older and weathered and a little wise, like that, aside from his erection and then Scooby Doo poster behind him on the wall. “Doesn’t do anything for me, either.”


End file.
